Snow Angels

12

I go back to my office, write a detailed summary of events and e-mail it to the national chief of police. A photocopy of Sufia’s address book is in a plastic sleeve on my desk. I have coffee and a cigarette and browse through it again. I recognize more names familiar from the tabloids. Sufia must have liked to surround herself with famous people.

I start dialing numbers. I introduce myself and say I have a few questions concerning Sufia Elmi. The media picked up on the murder through the national crime incident database and word has gotten around. People express shock. The interviews are all the same. No one knew Sufia well. The men say they went out a couple times, had some fun. The women say they hung out in nightclubs, went dancing, had some fun.

Valtteri comes in. “I called Heli,” he says. “She doesn’t want to see you and asked if I could bring her the keys.”

“Tell her no. Seppo’s car is a crime scene and she had access to it. I have to talk to her.”

“She won’t come.”

“Then arrest her and lock her up.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

He hands me a magazine. “I thought you should see this.” He walks out.

The front page of Alibi is splashed with the headline: “MURDER! SOMALI SEX GODDESS SLAUGHTERED IN SNOWFIELD!” When I open the magazine, I’m outraged. Two photos side by side occupy a quarter-page each. One is a still from her last movie, a display of her beauty. The other is a photo from the morgue, her corpse on a gurney in an unzipped body bag. She’s nude and ravaged, once again violated. Smaller but no less grisly photos are underneath.

Jaakko has written an article that refers to Sufia Elmi as Finland’s Black Dahlia. He’s managed to paint Sufia’s murder as both a race and sex crime and called to mind a legendary Hollywood murder. I wonder if Sufia’s murder will also pass into legend, if she will forever be Finland’s Black Dahlia. I find this disturbing. It’s as if the tragedy of her death has been forgotten before it was even recognized, trivialized in favor of tabloid glitz and the terrible romance of celebrity murder.

I didn’t want details of the crime released. The fucking diener must have sold Jaakko the photos. I’ll charge him with obstruction of justice.

My cell phone rings-it’s Sufia’s father. We must have been looking at the morgue photos of her at the same time. I answer. “Vaara.”

“Inspector, this is Abdi Barre. My wife is in tears. Can you imagine why?”

I can imagine. “The photos.”

“Her friend called and told my wife that revolting photos of her murdered daughter were published in a filthy magazine. She went to a newsstand and bought that filthy magazine. She is devastated and humiliated.”

“I’ll press charges against whoever sold the photos to the magazine.”

“You have failed to protect my daughter.”

He has my pity, but I’m tired of taking shit from him. “You can’t expect me to be responsible for security at a government facility over which I have no control.”

“I hold you responsible for all matters relating to my daughter.” Once again, he’s treating me like I’m on trial for Sufia’s murder. I don’t know why and it’s not fair. “You have my sympathy for the pain the photos caused you and your wife. I’ll deal with it today. I can’t do anything more.”

“The Koran tells us Inspector Vaara, that ‘when the sky is rent asunder, when the graves are hurled about, each soul shall know what it has done and what it has failed to do.’ For my wife and I, the sky has been rent asunder. Do not fail in your duty.”

He hangs up. I feel like he just punched me in the head.

Before I can recover from Abdi’s accusations, Valtteri knocks on my door and enters. “Antti and Jussi are back”-he hands me Seppo’s house keys-“and Heli’s here.”

He walks out, she walks in.

Apart from this morning, we haven’t spoken since she left me so many years ago. I didn’t think it would, but being alone in a room with her makes my pulse quicken. I light a cigarette, try to hide my discomfort. “Thanks for coming,” I say. “Have a seat.”

She hangs up a chinchilla coat and matching hat. “You didn’t leave me much choice.”

She puts her hands on her hips and looks around, like she’s looking for something to criticize. If so, she can’t find anything. I have a polished oak desk, nice art on the walls, a Persian rug on the floor. I paid for them myself. One of my theories of life is that happiness is in part derived from a pleasant environment.

She comes over to my desk and picks up a photo of Kate. “Pretty,” she says. She looks miffed about it, takes a seat across from me.

“Want anything?” I ask. “Coffee, soft drink, water?”

“What are you, a stewardess? I told you before, you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to see me. If you wanted to meet for coffee, you could have just called.”

She has a certain desiccated look. I often see it in wealthy female tourists. Fortyish, and making a desperate attempt to stop the aging process with overexercise and self-starvation, treatments, expensive lotions and makeup. It seldom works, and it hasn’t in Heli’s case. She looks older than her years and bitter. I can’t connect the woman in front of me with the girl I fell in love with.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” I say. “Your common-law husband butchered a girl he was having an affair with.”

She crosses her legs, folds her hands in the lap of her designer jeans and looks amused. “Yes, let’s cut to the chase. My ex-husband has a thirteen-year-old vendetta and concocted some half-assed attempt at revenge.”

I try to get this revenge theory she and Seppo have out of the way. “With your ego, you might find it hard to believe, but I’ve hardly thought about you for years.” I point at the picture of Kate. “I have a good life. You’re not worth wrecking it over.”

She smirks. “You’re right, I don’t believe it. When I call the newspapers and explain the history behind your investigation of Seppo, I doubt others will believe it either. What I did was for the best. You must realize that by now.”

I’m being dragged into a conversation I don’t want to have, but I can’t seem to stop it. “What you did was cruel. I didn’t deserve it.”

“Deserve,” she says. “Nobody gets what they deserve. If we did, we’d all burn in hell. We’re all fucking guilty.”

“You’re quite the philosopher.”

“Just admit that you hate me for what I did.”

I ask myself if this is true. “I don’t hate you. You want to know what I think? I’ll tell you. I don’t think about what you did to me anymore, but when I did, I used to remember when we were about fifteen. It was summer, you were in my folks’ house and I was doing something outside. I heard you scream and you kept screaming. I thought you were hurt. I ran in, and you had a sparrow in your hands. It had flown into the house and got tangled in flypaper hanging in the kitchen. It thrashed around trying to get loose and tore most of its feathers off. When I got there, you held it up to me. ‘Help it, help it,’ you said. I always wondered how you could have had so much pity for that bird, but so little for me.”

We sit in silence and look at each other. A good three minutes go by. I feel old pain resurfacing and try to suppress it. I have no idea what she’s thinking. She uncrosses her legs, crosses them again, smoothes an invisible wrinkle on her pants leg. “I’ve wondered that too, but I didn’t.”

I wait.

“I don’t remember. What did you do with the bird?” she asks.

It’s an ugly memory. I’m surprised she doesn’t recall. She followed me outside and watched me kill it. “I took it out to the front yard and stomped on it to put it out of its misery.”

Another minute passes. “I’ll take that water now.”

I pour it from a carafe on a sideboard and give it to her.

“Tell me what you want to know,” she says.

“Did you know Seppo was having an affair with Sufia Elmi?”

“No.”

“Not a clue?”

She sighs. “Seppo has affairs from time to time. I ignore them. They always blow over.”

“This doesn’t bother you?”

“That’s not your business.”

She’s right. I should keep the questions focused on Seppo. I know he has family money and that because of it, he used to sit on the boards of various corporations and institutions, but he seems to have gone off the radar. I don’t know what he does at present. “Does Seppo have any kind of work, any responsibilities?”

She shakes her head. “Not anymore. He’s rich, he doesn’t have to do anything.”

“Has Seppo ever been violent toward you?”

“Seppo is incapable of violence. The sight of blood makes him sick. If he cuts himself shaving, he cries.”

This is the man she left me for. Amazing. “He drinks a lot?”

“Yes, he drinks.”

“Does he exhibit psychotic behavior when he’s drunk?”

She puts on a facade of boredom. “He giggles and gets cuddly.”

“The murder occurred the day before yesterday, at about two P.M. It appears that your BMW was used in Sufia Elmi’s abduction. She may have been raped in the backseat. Do you know where Seppo and the car were at that time?”

“No, I was in church all afternoon.”

“Church?”

“That’s why I’m in Kittila, to rediscover my religious roots.”

I try to hide my surprise. Heli’s antagonism toward religion used to be extreme. That was a long time ago. I remind myself that I don’t know her anymore.

“What makes you think she might have been raped in our car?” she asks.

“Blood and semen.”

She looks at me like I’m stupid. “Have you stopped to consider that maybe he fucked her and she wanted it?”

“I have, but thanks for your input.”

She stands up. “I’m leaving now. Can I have my house keys?”

I toss them to her.

“What about the car?”

I might want to sit in the garage and listen to Miles Davis again.

“In due course.”

“My advice to you,” she says, “is to release Seppo before you make things any worse for yourself. Good luck with your snipe hunt and with the media. I’ll be giving interviews soon. You’ll be hearing from our lawyer. I’ll see to it that Seppo sues you for fabricating a case against him.”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“Good-bye Kari.” She leaves, shuts the door behind her with a soft click.